Spitz: Mom gets a passing grade for college orientation

Here's what I learned in college last week: It's harder than I remember.

Julia Spitz/Daily News staff

Here's what I learned in college last week: It's harder than I remember.

And I didn't even have to write papers or turn in math projects this time around.

I just had to show up for about a dozen hour-long sessions on financial aid, Owl Bucks, foreign exchange opportunities and alcohol use/abuse. Buy stuff. And share a dorm room with a woman I'd never met.

It's that last part that taught me the most.

Not that I expected to learn anything college-wise at this point in my life.

When the notice about overnight "parent orientation'' arrived a few weeks ago, I thought it might be some sort of joke. Back in my day, even in my older kids' day, there was certainly no expectation parents attend any orientation. As a matter of fact, I don't think there was much in the way of orientation for students. You just showed up with all your worldly goods one late summer/early fall day, moved in with a bunch of people you'd never laid eyes on, and hoped for the best.

But that was then, and this is now, and "parent orientation'' has become quite common, a former real-college roomie with kids younger than my olders and older than my youngest told me when I asked her about what kind of nonsense this was.

So that's how I found myself warily sizing up the woman in my dorm room - "I'm sure you'll have your own room,'' my husband had said, perhaps knowingly lying, perhaps just not having any more of a clue than I did - at 8 a.m. last Thursday, about 90 miles from home.

It turned out we seemed to have what it takes to be good roommates: She prefers showers before bed, I absolutely must have a shower in the morning. Neither of us appeared overtly psychotic or likely to raid the other's closet. Or drink until we threw up. Both of us seemed willing to make the best of the situation for 28 hours.

By the time we were faced with the decision of which lunch line to get in, Barbara and I were like real roommates, looking out for the other's best interests by scoping out where to find the ketchup and saving a seat for the other. We introduced one another to other parents we had met in our orientation groups, and referred to the other as "my roommate.''

In fact, we were kind of looking forward to hanging out together after more than 12 hours of seminars and activities, when we were confronted with a reality many college kids face on move-in day.

Unbeknownst to either of us, we had a third roommate.

And a note under the door saying breakfast would start at 6:45, not 7, the next morning.

Which led to a typical first-week-with-roommates scenario a few hours later.

"Do you think we should wake her up?'' Barbara and I asked one another at 6:30.

We decided it would be the right thing to do. If she didn't want to be up, she could go back to bed, right? So long as she wasn't anything like one of my former real-college roomies, we'd all be OK either way.

The three of us made it to the dining hall in time for the coffee we desperately craved and by the end of orientation we had forged some solid, if fleeting, bond.

Perhaps loose bond-forming is of the more important life skills school teaches us, and college living reinforces.

For some window of time, for a variety of reasons, we become a part of a group - parents of Little Leaguers on a certain team, workers attending a week-long conference together, regulars at the same club, commuters whose paths cross every day.

One of the hardest parts about going back to college, at this point in my life, is thinking back on the hundreds of fleeting friendships I've had through the years, and remembering all the broken promises of "Let's stay in touch.''

The other? Not knowing whether to laugh or cry on the drive home when my son said, in the same relieved and coddling tone of a parent relieved the kindergartner did OK on the first day of school, "It looked like you made friends with a couple of the other parents when I saw you this morning.''

Julia Spitz can be reached at 508-626-3968 or jspitz@wickedlocal.com. Follow tweets at twitter.com/SpitzJ_MW.